UPDATE: Dec 18
Please read this important article by Bill Deagle, MD if you need more facts about the toxicity of aspartame, yet another substance originally approved as an insecticide -
ASPARTAME IS NEUROTOXIC---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This morning I received an anonymous post in response to the many articles I have posted both on my original website and Natural Health News. The post came with a signature of John E. Garst.
I was not willing to post the comment because it is submitted anonymously, which is the antithesis of our policy. We will post comments if they are submitted with your name and request it be posted without your name, and it is salient to the topic.
Whoever the Garst fellow is I found his attack on my background offensive as he states the following:
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
(FYI, I have absolutely no financial or biasing connection with the aspartame, the soft drink or related industries. However, I am just tired of people who have no understanding of the the sciences of pharmacology and toxicology trying to pass judgment by hearsay on something that they know nothing about.)
I have an extensive understanding of pharmacology, toxicology, and nutrition, as well as human physiology, biochemistry and medicine.
Obviously the sender failed to read ABOUT....
Aspartame is toxic, it is an insecticide. If you want to ingest insecticide, just like Splenda as well, then do so at your own risk.
And if you don't want insecticides in the food you purchase or ingest I'd encourage you to write you Member of Congress and demand it be taken off the market.
However if you want the science, please read on.
ASPARTAME FLACK TRIES TO MISLEAD NEW MEXICO LEGISLATURE
John Garst brags that he played a major role in obliterating efforts to ban aspartame in 06. Hes trying to do it again by bombarding legislators with complicated lingo only a biochemist can comprehend. Its a vacuous bluff with hot air said James Bowen MD. who is a physician, surgeon, biochemist, and an aspartame victim with Lou Gehrigs.
New Mexico lawmakers are expected to take Garth's word for it and do what he wants. This last-minute blast is an ambush in bad faith, like yelling fire in a crowded theater so the legislature will run for the exits. Garst wants a stampede!
Good faith requires him to come forward in time for his assertions to be examined. But then he would be exposed. With no time for deliberation the legislators are expected to just accept his say-so.
At the say-so level: R G Walton M.D. Chairman, Center for Behavioral Medicine at NE Ohio College of Medicine analyzed 92 peer-reviewed studies not funded by aspartame industry. 92% found PROBLEMS!
There were also 74, sponsored by NutraSweet, which said its safe as rain. Dr. Walton concluded Serious questions have been raised about the reliability of industry-sponsored studies of the safety of synthetic chemicals. Aspartame, in particular, has been the focus of significant ongoing controversy Walton named numerous adverse clinical events including seizures, mood disorders, headaches and brain tumors.
In 95 the FDA listed 92 reactions from 10,000 volunteered complaints, including death.
H. J. Roberts, M.D., FACP a diabetic specialist has produced 20 books and his first text on medical diagnosis was used by 60,000 doctors to prepare for their Board examinations. In his response to Garst's allegation that aspartame sensitivity reflects folate deficiency, he wrote to the members of the New Mexico Legislature:
You have received correspondence concerning folate deficiency as the purported cause of aspartame disease. While folate plays a role in the metabolism of methanol (methyl alcohol), the severity and widespread nature of reactions to aspartame products suggest that this assertion must be tempered by the following:
*The methyl alcohol in aspartame is FREE (rarely found as such in nature.)
*The assertion that methanol concentrations never are very high after aspartame ingestion is erroneous. I devoted an entire chapter to methanol toxicity in my text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic (pp 668-685), and show in Figure XXI-1 the dose-related blood levels of methanollasting 8 or more hours.
*The assertion that many New Mexicans suffer from a folate deficiency is challenged. While I discussed such a theoretical deficiency in my text, there is no evidence that folate deficiency is widespread among Americans. For example, a Mayo Clinic study involving thousands of blood assays concluded that it was rare. Garst ignores the major roles of phenylalanine and aspartic acid in aspartame disease.
Enormous effort has gone into this constructive attempt to ban aspartame products. I believe that it constitutes an imminent health hazard for New Mexicans. You are to be congratulated for coming this far in the face of severe corporate resistance.
H. J. Roberts, M.D., FACP, FCCP
Dr. Maria Alemany, Departament du Nutricio I Bromatologia, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, who was the researcher for the damning Trocho Study wrote that he was deeply insulted by Garsts propaganda. Remember that Dr. Alemanys study proved the formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol embalms living tissue and damages DNA. As we know when you damage DNA you can destroy humanity. So concerned for the public was Dr. Alemany that after his study he reported it to the authorities. He told me personally that he was concerned aspartame could kill millions and I said has killed millions. After all aspartame can trigger all sorts of neurodegenerative diseases and tumors and can precipitate diabetes. Even the FDA found many types of tumors and brain cancer on original studies and the Ramazzini Study in 2005 confirmed FDA findings reporting the study showed aspartame to be a multipotential carcinogen. Dr. Alemany is a hero to the world and proved beyond a shadow of doubt what aspartame experts believed for years.
Dr. Alemany said: First, Garst suggests that perhaps aspartame just affects people with a metabolic deficit. If that were the case (I doubt it, deficits may just enhance the effect of aspartame), why then has it not been studied? In the case of cyclamate, the ban on its use is based on the deleterious effects on only a fraction of the population
Second. Dr. Garst accepts that aspartame yields formaldehyde... then, why not give formaldehyde to the people to help them synthesize methyl groups? Did I understood well (after speaking of the double helix which has very little to do here unless for the binding of formaldehyde to its strands to induce mutation) that Dr. Garst suggests that aspartame may be beneficial because its derived formaldehyde may supply one-carbon units for methylations through the folate pathway? If that were the case, why not get the FDA approval for aspartame as a drug/vitamin substitute? This is an outright fallacy (or better said bull-manure).
Third. Please, not again the tale of the methyl-esters of pectins! It has been proved to nausea that most of the methyl-alcohol esters of uronic acids remain esterified through intestinal passage, and that freed in the large intestine by the action of the flora is majoritarily and keenly used by these microbes for their profit. The remaining methyl alcohol leaving the intestine is largely detoxified by the liver (this is a physiological mechanism well known and proved effective for millennia). Aspartame, however, is not fully hydrolyzed in the intestine, being absorbed in part intact. After the intestine-portal vein-liver trap is surpassed, the body protection against methanol wanes, and the tiny liberation of methanol in tissues yields little amounts of formaldehyde that cause serious damage, precisely because it behaves very differently from the natural products methanol. Even in cases of wood-alcohol (methanol) intoxication, the liver helps to stem the overflow of toxic. Methanol inhalation or injection is much more dangerous, because it goes directly into the bloodstream and tissues jumping the liver barrier. This is explained in elementary physiology and biochemistry courses, it is unbelievable that this is maintained as a "serious" scientific position by somebody that got a PhD, unless this is not a discourse of science but of economy.
Theories are nice, but have to be proved true. The one Dr. Garst exposes here is that maintained by pro-aspartame fellows for decades. This is how they explained the incorporation of aspartame label into protein and DNA in the earliest experiments on aspartame using tracers that were published (none was published by this group thereafter). This theory fits very well with the story of a harmless aspartame, but it has been proven untrue. We did it, and this is why our study was so damaging. If the theory recycled by Dr. Garst were true, then, the carbon of the methyl alcohol of aspartame would enter the one-carbon path mediated by tetrahydrofolate, this can be done via formaldehyde or via formate. These one-carbon units may be processed (depending on demand) to methyl groups, such as those found in carnitine, thymine and methionine (the only amino acid that can get back methyl groups in mammals), thus explaining the presence of label in protein (methionine) or DNA (thymine). We gave labeled aspartame to rats, and got their DNA and protein from a number of tissues, and found large proportions of label. So far no differences with the Aspartame-lovers theory. However, we hydrolyzed the protein and DNA and looked for label in thymine in DNA and methionine in protein. We found none. Instead, the label was in unknown spots in the chromatograms, which plainly indicates that the incorporation of label into DNA and protein was NOT through the incorporation of methyl groups, i.e. the one-carbon folate pathway. Other ways of label incorporation should explain the attachment of the label. The most logical explanation (justified by innumerable studies that show that formaldehyde attaches to protein and other molecules) was that aspartame-derived formaldehyde was chemically bound to protein and DNA, inactivating (embalming, in fact) proteins and altering DNA structure causing mutations.
The experimental studies show that the theory is faulty. No counter-experiments were published showing our possible "errors", nor the theory of folate pathway incorporation has been proved experimentally (it is fairly easy to demonstrate, it only needs to be true, however). This is why I felt insulted. It is an insult to the intelligence of anybody with even a thin varnish of scientific knowledge to discard proven facts and stick to self-fulfilling harebrained theories. If what the aspartame lovers say about the fate of aspartame carbon is true, why nobody has proved it experimentally? It is easy to carry out and much less expensive than hiring lawyers to defend bad science with top dollar legal expertise
I used as heading the famous initial words of the second Catilinary by Cicero, which I remember from my early high-school Latin. Since probably most Americans were lucky enough not to study Latin when 10-11 years old, I provide an approximate translation: "Up to when do you, Catilina, will abuse our patience?", substitute Catilina for the present aspartame producers and probably it fits very well the picture.
Good luck on the banning of this menace to our collective health.
Best regards,
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Dr. Maria Alemany
Departament de Nutrici i Bromatologia
Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona
Av. Diagonal, 645
08028 Barcelona. Espanya / Espaa / Spain
Today in Dr. Roberts medical text there is a page on pre-embalming thanks to the work of the courageous Dr. Maria Alemany
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Dr. James Bowen was extremely upset that John Garst tried to deceive the legislature, especially the day before the discussion and said, This is a brazen attempt to violate every due process procedure with respect to all scientific and legal hearings.. Dr. Garth's ambush is only an attempt to win against the health and welfare of the people of New Mexico, by unlawful and unscientific ambush and by utilizing brazen pseudo science lying.
He hopes to impress by using impressive Big Words from science! This is merely science trash I will mention one case of his falsity: abuse of science and scientific process. Dr. Garst says that the folate issue is one reason not to disturb the present commerce of aspartame. This causes a highly synergized form in human metabolism, obligatory: methanol to formaldehyde to formic acid to carbon monoxide toxic axis! Molecule for molecule, the deadly formic acid congener (formate) from aspartame metabolism consumes (molecule per molecule) one molecule of folic acid (folate) to eliminate the formate without creating subsequent carbon monoxide poisoning.
Aspartame has caused many years of folate iatrogenic deficiency, already causing many human illness epidemics, fetal deformities. When in l984 I called the FDA about this, because they had concurrent with their licensure of aspartame, abandoned their 50 year standard of folic acid ingestion by pregnant women (1 mg), leading to grievous fetal defects, they like Dr. Garst lied their way out saying: We have already checked all that out. There just aren't any problems at all. But neural tube, bladder defects and cardiac deformities escalated within our newborn population victimized by aspartame. Birth defects are a major epidemic caused by aspartame, with full protection and avid cooperation from the US FDA. James Bowen, M.D.
Mark Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Center says this short document answers all of the aspartame industrys claims about aspartame and formaldehyde poisoning: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/abuse/methanol.html
Dr. John Garst is a Ph.D and its obvious he knows he is publishing false information. His modus operandi is to use his credentials to deceive others because he cant debate true experts who can easily take apart his nonsense.
The New Mexico legislature has better sense to even consider Garst's claptrap. Aspartame manufacturers must sit up at night thinking of ways to deceive. Families all over the world have been destroyed by this poison causing male sexual dysfunction, cancer and diabetes and sudden death. Enough is enough. Aspartame must be banned from the planet to save the human race.
Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder
Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770 242-2599
www.wnho.net and http://www.dorway.com
Aspartame Toxicity Center, http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
Aspartame Information List, http://www.mpwhi.com
Aspartame Documentary: Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World
6:28 AM
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